If you have received this lesson, you are part of a group of people striving to become better and closer to Hashem. Yet sometimes we miss the mark. We get very concerned with our own spiritual growth and development, which is good, but we can sometimes be a little off.
Rav Nosson Wachtfogel, the Mashgiach of Lakewood, brought down, in his sefer on Elul (page 14) that there was a once young rabbi who complained to him,
“Ani/ I am not learning enough..
Ani/I am not praying well…
Ani/ I don’t remember what I learn..
Ani/ I am not successful at all..”
To which, Rav Wachtfogel responded, “My advice to you is to stop thinking about yourself. Start thinking about the Jewish people. Stop being so involved with yourself. Here you are, getting ready for Rosh Hashanah, standing in front of the Creator of the world, surrounded by the Jewish people, an entire nation. And all that you are thinking about all day is yourself?”
So they asked the rabbi how to disconnect from Ahavat Atzmo/love of yourself. His answer was to get involved with the sibbur/ the people, and think about them. He said that when a person starts doing for the people, and thinking about them, he starts becoming part of the sibbur.
That is the job of Rosh Hashanah. On Rosh Hashanah, we are totally involved in our prayers about God ‘s kingdom. We are praying for God to be known by the whole world. Therefore, he says, you have to be able to forget about yourself. It is very hard. Our love for ourselves is the most powerful love, as we have discussed previously. The only way to break out of it is by doing for others, making the “you” a little bit bigger. He says that the reason why we do not mention sin on Rosh Hashanah is because it is two days that we disconnect from ourselves. We are not talking about our lacking’s, or our stumbling’s. We aren’t talking about our needs. We are just thinking about God and the Jewish people at large. This is not easy, and we can’t fool ourselves, but at least we have to know what the goal is. Even if you can’t do anything to help, there is a valuable lesson to learn from a story about Rav Shach, the Gadol HaDor of the previous generation.
Toward the end of his years, in one of his last meetings, he called in the Rav of Natanya, Rabbi Yisroel Meir Lau (who later became the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel). He took Rabbi Lau’s hand in his and started to cry. “I heard,” said Rabbi Shach, “that there are forty stores that sell pig meat in Natanya; that there is a problem in Ashkelon with chillul Shabbos; that they want to institute secular reforms in Tel Aviv. “I’m over one hundred years old, I have no strength, and people are not listening to me. The only thing I have left is the ability to cry.”
Rabbi Shach continued crying for a few more minutes. And then, while crying for Klal Yisrael, he slipped into an exhausted sleep.
That is a Gadol B’Yisrael.
He is not thinking about himself. He is always thinking about what he can do, and if he can’t do anything for the Jewish people, he can at least cry for them.